Alan Jennings To Train Sharecroppers

Those of you who listened to the podcast of my interview with Alan Jennings know that toward the end of the interview I confessed to snickering about his organization's plan ( Community Action Committer of Lehigh Valley) to take over the farmer training at the Lehigh County owned Seed Farm.  Those who follow this blog know that I oppose Farmland Preservation,  because it is a ridiculous disconnect with the reality of food production in 2018.  It is however politically correct for urban liberals to think that if as much farmland as possible stays available,  there will be an endless banquet of environmental bliss, with organic food no less.  Alan sees it as an extension of food for the poor, sort of another ladder step in the food pantry mission. Low income food issues are because of money, not food production shortfalls. These liberals of course are ignorant of the long hours and hard work which goes into farming. They are also ignorant of the economic reality of competing with large scale agriculture.

Now, unless Alan wants to gift each of his graduates with a farm at our expense,  they will either be a farm hand, or at best a sharecropper.  What is really scary about Alan's plan is that it has the endorsement of the Republican controlled Lehigh County Commission.  They are apparently so vote craven, that they go along with such nonsense.

The only practical program assisting farming is Clean And Green.  Unfortunately, the Morning Call ran an expose on the program featuring photographs of large expensive houses,  surrounded by farmland. While the program limits tax reduction to only the land actively farmed,  the photographs give the impression that the tax breaks are going to people who don't need it.  I suppose the liberal paper thinks that those involved in agriculture are supposed to live in shacks.  Worse yet, the paper thinks that their story is a masterpiece, has has been running it on their website for months.

photocredit: Dorothea Lange, Son of Sharecropper, 1937

above reprinted from July of 2018 

ADDENDUM JUNE 17, 2025:If you use my blog's search engine, over the years you can find dozens of posts about Community Action of Lehigh Valley. I have criticized them for not giving out fishing poles, but rather buying people fish markets. Currently, they are crying the blues over proposed federal cuts under the Trump administration. They have gotten so big over the last couple decades, and so far beyond their original mission of directly helping poor people, they would. have to shrink 75% to get back to their original mission. They are so fat, that in the current Morning Call article they claim that many of their employees could be making more in the private sector...Perhaps now they will have that opportunity.

Non-Profits and The Allentown Parks

On Friday afternoon I saw a young family holding hands and staring longingly through the fence at the empty swimming pool in Jordan Park. At the same time, I saw thugs racing their cars on the large parking lot at Jordan Park. The expensive outdoor prison yard exercise equipment stood there unused. 

They're building full court basketball on the remaining grass at the previous kiddie friendly Stevens Park. The Rider-Pool Foundation is one of the backers of the project. The foundation supports the Wildlands Conservancy, which promotes the weed walls along the creeks. The foundation also supports Promise Neighborhood, which supposedly reduces gun violence. Meanwhile, as the Morning Call compiles and aggregates the press releases from the wealthy non-profits, tension is mounting between the lessor non-profits, which are competing to monitor the thug activity the ill advised full basketball court is sure to foster.

Being an advocate for the traditional park system has become a lonely job. Reporting on the park system realities is not only thankless, but resented. Seeing resources misspent on a naive, woke agenda is  frustrating. Nevertheless, this blog will continue the mission.

shown above the deteriorating Jordan Park Pool

Fountain Pool Of My Youth

While I've been involved in many issues in Allentown over the years, defending the park system of my youth is the one I find the most rewarding. It's not my personal memory lane I care about, but rather an iconic park system that was in itself a designation.

I remember the picture postcard racks in the dime stores on Hamilton Street. They were full of postcards of the Allentown parks, including the rose garden, and along the different creeks. The card shown above is the former Fountain Park Pool, now closed for many years. Although most of my swims took place at Cedar Beach Pool, our gang would visit the other four pools when one of us could borrow the family car.  

Over the years our different pools have been closed for different excuses. The Fountain Park pool shown above was closed because supposedly the filter broke, and it would cost $170K to fix. Allentown is now spending over half a $mil on a cement skateboard bowl at Jordan Park, while the park's swimming pool is shuttered. I understand that the swimming pools are expensive to maintain. I understand that finding lifeguards isn't easy, and that the pools may require more oversight than in previous years. BUT... swimming pools on hot summer days should be a city recreation department 101.

Allentown Archaeology

When it comes to the history of industrial Allentown, the railroad buffs are among the current experts. Our heavy manufacturing base moved its materials on the tracks of several railroads. The Front Street area was crisscrossed with tracks and sidings. The West End Branch ran along Sumner Avenue, crossed Tilghman Street, looped around 17th Street and ended near 12th and Liberty. The Barber Quarry Branch ran along the Little Lehigh until it then followed Cedar Creek. It crossed Hamilton Street near the current Hamilton Family Restaurant and ended at what is now the Park Department Building. The rail buffs are current day archaeologists, looking for remnants of those glory days. Shown above is a portion of the Barber Quarry pier and track. This is at the bottom of Lehigh Street hill, near the former bank call center, near the former Acorn Hotel, in a former city still called Allentown.
photo courtesy of Mike Huber, Coplay

above reprinted from March of 2011 

ADDENDUM AUGUST 22, 2023:The bridge has just been rebuilt, and the portion of the earlier railroad bridge show above was removed.

ADDENDUM JUNE 12, 2025: Between the NIZ handouts and compliant city planners, future archaeologists will be wondering about two new projects. The 2013 blueprint and undersized parcel at 9th and Walnut has a new owner.  Compliant planners had kept Bruce Loch's pencil tower plan on the mini parcel marketable for over a decade. I remember back in the day in the mid 1980's, when Daddona sold Loch the undersized city parcels in the west end, and allowed him to build houses on them.

The second NIZ fueled project is an oversized building near the river on Front Street. This will be the second harvest for the boys building at the former Neuweiler site. Pat Browne's NIZ is the gift that keeps giving for a few developers, regardless of parking or other quality of life issues plaguing Allentown.

Both projects have supporters, and I'm not saying that they are bad for Allentown. I am, however, injecting some institutional knowledge into the projects, and reminding readers that they will be paid for with our diverted state taxes.

East Side 'Shootings

There were two gunfire incidents last weekend on the east side. Police Chief Roca said  The actions that are committed by people in this incident do not reflect the hard working people of Allentown. Maybe they don't reflect the hardworking people, but they do reflect too many others. In regard to a new basketball court being built at Stevens Park, Mayor Tuerk said (we can) start rebuilding trust...

Last week Allentown unanimously passed an anti-discrimination ordinance, despite that the last discrimination incident was staged by the victim. Seemingly, there are no longer any officials or institutions in Allentown interested in candor. Motivation appears limited to electability and inclusion and trust, even if it's including the wrong people or having the wrong result.

I'm just a simple small town pizza blogger, who thinks that a city hall should be preoccupied more with public safety, and less with inclusion and trust.

artwork by Mark Beyer

SpaceX and Mar-a-Lago

Chronic readers of this blog know that last year I revealed that molovinsky on allentown also maintains a low-rent office near the Space Coast in Florida. While not actually on the coast, it's close enough that I can see Musk's rockets taking off, and they take off several times a week. Consequently, they are a large part of the economy on the eastern side of central Florida.

Trump has been saying that if Musk doesn't shut his yapper,, there will be a price to pay. While it's true that SpaceX rakes $Billions from the government contracts, there is no competitor that can provide service anywhere near as safe and/or reliable. SpaceX actually softly lands its reusable rockets on the middle of a barge in the ocean. Last time anyone saw something like that was Flash Gordon make-believe in 1950. Even if Trump and Musk end up in the ring on McMahon's wrestling show, we'll still need SpaceX.

The pundits are saying that Trump won and Musk loses. Musk says that Trump is around for 3.5 more years, but he has 40 to go. I think Musk gives Trump's influence too long, it will be over by the mid-terms.

photocredit:James Robert